It has been a strange time for classical music fans lately. Daniel Barenboim tells us that classical music can stop wars. But, at the same time, a report from the Policy Studies Institute tells us audiences are dwindling and that youngsters can't name any classical composers. And, in these pages, Martin Kettle says that pianists have become boring.

I remember a moment in one of Hungarian pianist Gyorgy Sebok's masterclasses, when someone commented on the staggering technical fluency of everyone in the class. "Yes," he answered. "The standard of mediocrity is rising all the time." In other words, despite the fact that lots of people play the piano very well, there are few visionaries. But are there any fewer than in the Golden Age that Martin Kettle describes - or is he just looking in the wrong place?

The finest of today's soloists are as good as they have been in any era, but they don't have a monopoly on integrity. Working as a pianist in the field of chamber music, I am surrounded by people a great deal more idealistic and interesting than many soloists. They earn a fraction of the money big names do, but there are plenty of visionaries among them. How can big soloists be visionary when they are running between the airport and the concert hall in yet another foreign city?

Some solo pianists do scarcely more than travel, practise, give concerts and eat and sleep. On such a treadmill, it is very hard to remain fresh and interesting. To look for illumination from today's international soloists is a bit like looking for a lost object in a place where you know it can't be. In the good old days, great pianists tended to be very cultivated people with lots of interests, a wide circle of friends in all walks of life, time for chamber music or teaching, and far fewer concerts. They didn't travel nearly as much, or put themselves under the pressure that today's soloists do, notching up more concerts per year than their rivals to assert their dominance.

We also have to see things in historical perspective. Even luminaries such as Artur Schnabel, Artur Rubinstein, and Rudolf Serkin were, when young, compared unfavourably with their predecessors. They were accused of being unaware of tradition, although in their later years they came to seem like its embodiment.

This is not just about pianists. I vividly remember sitting in the great violinist Sandor Vegh's chamber music classes at the International Musicians' Seminars in Cornwall 20 years ago. He constantly used to upbraid us youngsters because we didn't realise that we were the heirs to a living tradition of European playing. In his case, he traced his ancestry through his teacher Hubay to Hubay's friendship with Brahms, and Brahms's lifelong veneration of Beethoven.

Vegh used to say that the European way of using tone and timing to shape phrases was vital to giving European art music its true voice. He complained that the influence of America was wiping it out, and that soon all string players would be playing with American-style constant vibrato, and with a big tone that projected to the back of the concert hall, regardless of whether such a tone suited the music. He called it "showing off" the music to the audience, not "giving" it to them. And he said we must understand and digest the European way, giving the music the rise and fall of natural speech and song patterns, or the art would be lost. "It's up to you!" he would insist, waggling a meaty finger in a student's face.

Sitting at the piano in front of him, I heard this speech so many times that, for years afterwards, I could give an accurate imitation of it without truly realising its significance. As time went by, however, I noticed the proliferation of just the sort of playing he warned us about. Whether it was American in origin or not I can't say, but at any rate it quickly become international, and has remained so. The tendency to show off rather than give the music is seen among instrumentalists of all kinds - perhaps especially with solo pianists.

Nobody had record collections in the good old days. To hear a favourite pianist, one would have to wait until he or she came to town. Their concert would be a real event, eagerly anticipated and discussed for ages afterwards. Today, one can download anyone's recording at the click of a mouse. A live concert these days often serves just to back up what one already knows of a player through their recordings. Players themselves are conscious that they are known through their recordings and have to be recognisably like that: a vicious circle of "high standards" is created, which keeps out innovation.

In my experience, great publicity is not the best guide to great playing. Some of the performances that have stuck longest in my memory have been given by students and young or unknown pianists who love the music and have time to explore it seriously. Music lovers and critics should widen their concert circuit, keep their ears open, and perhaps stop expecting their musical highs to come from people who are saying to themselves: "If it's Tuesday, this must be Melbourne."